GatesFAIL: How Hope Became Military’s Plan in Libya

If Robert Gates wasn’t already ready to quit after over four years as defense secretary, the bludgeoning he took from Congress over Libya on Thursday probably steeled his resolve. Problem is, the way he explained the U.S. and NATO’s goals for the two-week Libya war practically invited the abuse. The Pentagon chief who introduced realism into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the defense budget presented a faith-based war plan to legislators.

All of Gates’ efforts went to rigidly distinguishing the U.S.’ political goal of getting rid of Gadhafi from NATO’s military objective of grounding the colonel’s aircraft and preventing a massacre. The occasional Democratic lawmaker, needing to defend the Obama administration, piped up to say how that was perfectly consistent. But far more members of the House and Senate armed services committees saw a war in which military objectives stopped far short of political ones.

Gates is in a bind: this is the strategy President Obama articulated on Monday. But Gates didn’t make it easy on himself. While defining the military mission as “limited,” he expressed confidence that “political and economic measures” can lead to Gadhafi’s downfall. Under pressure, Gates conceded that a “stalemate” wasn’t an acceptable solution for U.S. policy in Libya. So for good measure, he contended that continued allied airstrikes — not conducted by U.S. pilots — can batter Gadhafi loyalists until they face “a very different set of choices and behaviors in the future.” In other words: hoping the commanders quit and kill Gadhafi.

It didn’t escape lawmakers. There’s “so much vaguery in it,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. “Hope is not a strategy,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, “and it certainly doesn’t degrade armored units.”

Worse, Gates had to make his case for the strategy against the backdrop of rebel retreats in eastern Libya. That only prompted senators to question the wisdom of ending the U.S. role in striking Gadhafi’s forces now that NATO is running the war. So Gates and Mullen hedged, saying U.S. gunships would be “on standby” if NATO forces couldn’t stop a massacre, and welcoming legislators’ points that two U.S. admirals — Adm. Samuel Locklear and Adm. James Stavridis — remain key to the NATO chain of command. Never mind that they meant that as a criticism of the administration’s honesty about who’s running the war.

But when pressed about aiding the rebels — anything to more directly get rid of Gadhafi — Gates simply said the U.S. doesn’t know much about who they really are or what their agenda is, so he opposes U.S. military aid to them. (Not a “unique capability” of the U.S., as he put it.) Their “governance capacity” for a post-Gadhafi Libya is “limited, if not nonexistent,” he said. So if “someone else” in NATO or the Arab world wants to train them, they can be Gates’ guest.

Legislators were obviously frustrated at Gates’ willingness to back a war that stops short of achieving its political objective. That’s why the defense secretary had his Howard Beale moment.

“I acknowledge I am preoccupied with avoiding mission creep, avoiding an open-ended, very large scale commitment in this respect,” Gates said, evincing frustration of his own. Not only is the military kinda busy in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has “19 ships and 18,000 Americans in uniform helping” Japan. “We are in serious budget trouble” due to Congress’ failure to pass a fiscal 2011 budget. And for good measure, he reminded the Senate that it voted unanimously to endorse the no-fly zone.

Having committed the military to such overstretch, without concern for the costs on the military that Gates warned about, senators’ insistence that the U.S. not scale back its role appeared to Gates like a recipe for stretching the military even further.

Only Gates had to concede that the probable “next step” in NATO circles was to discuss how to aid the rebels — effectively, the mission creep that so alarms him. Having been unable to articulate how to either live with a stalemate; live with Gadhafi; or overthrow Gadhafi, short of hoping the U.S. draws an inside straight, it’s hard to prevent those next steps from coming to pass.

Again, this isn’t really Gates’ fault. It’s the strategy the president decided upon, all for the seemingly limited goal of preventing a massacre in Benghazi. Perhaps the U.S. really can draw back its forces to a supporting role. Perhaps NATO strikes can actually provoke a loyalist coup. And perhaps the U.S. won’t find itself called upon to dig in further in Libya, or help with a “peacekeeping” role in the event Gadhafi loses.

But if not, getting out of the Pentagon probably never looked so attractive to Gates. It’s a lot easier than getting out of Libya.